cantab

For getting to the other planets you just need some method to figure out your ejection delta-V and angle. That can be a mod, it can equally well be an external tool such as alexmoon's planner, or if you want to do things the old fashioned way it can be a pen and paper and a calculator. Of course I can see why having a mod right in the game is helpful, especially if you don't have the screen real estate to have KSP and a web browser open together. As for who KSP is for, well it's a game where failing spectacularly can be just as much fun as succeeding. In its current state it is a game where you'll need initiative, it doesn't handhold you or give you specific instructions to do stuff, but it's not a game where you have to be all sophisticated and technical to have some fun.

That's not a reaction of space, that's a reaction of your eyes or an autoexposing camera. A camera could perfectly well show the background stars provided it wasn't aimed right at the Sun, but it would overexpose the sunlit spacecraft in doing so. Conversely if the spacecraft was exposed right, the background stars would be invisible. To be honest, neither should be in KSP; the former would look awful and probably be mistaken for a bug, the latter would make people thing there was no stellar background at all. In any case, "high dynamic range" methods could get round the issue. We do at present get the stars heavily washed out if the Sun is in direct view, which is sensible enough.

In other people's photos and videos, they look gorgeous. In my game, they look kinda cruddy, because I have the graphics turned down.

Oh yeah, one other thing. I almost always either turn the rocket on the pad or roll it during the ascent so that I can pitch down to east to make my gravity turn, rather than leaving it in the regular orientation and yawing. For virtually all rockets it makes no difference, but it just feels right for the turn to be a pitch down.

Earlier I spent rather too long futzing around with a launcher instead of just shoving MOAR BOOSTERS onto it. I eventually got something satisfactory, if a bit low on TWR. 25 tons to LKO, with a generous margin, and IMHO reasonable aesthetics. Boosters are 3 S1 SRBs (the new long ones). First stage is a mainsail and 3 of the much-maligned Mark 55's. Second stage is 4 LV-T30's. I could have got better performance with the new engines, but didn't feel like using them. (Apart from the new SRB, I love that, definitely my favourite new engine.) I used it to launch the Tycho 1 asteroid mission. Jeb tried out the seats on the lander once it reached LKO, and was not impressed by the positioning of the reading lamps. Edit: And burning to eject Kerbin I discover the drawback of having 1 LV-909 on a 24 ton ship. A seven minute burn is kinda long.

Even in the barebones career mode we have now, there is risk vs reward. Do you play it safe and do another Mun landing, or go off on an ambitious trip to Gilly? Do you try and bring the plane back under control, or deploy the chutes for a safe emergency landing? Do you take the time for an unmanned test, or just stick Kerbals in the pod and go for it? True, at present the only thing really being risked is player time. But once we have money and so on, and maybe Revert Flight gets taken out of career, there'll be more in-game risks to take.

If you really want it you can always revert back to 0.23. It's done from the game properties in Steam.

Put a capsule right at the top, sit it on the launchpad, and read off the altitude, then take away the altitude of the pad.

If you want you can always cheat. A burst of 5x time acceleration will kill the spin.

I think it can. Balance for sandbox requires that as far as reasonable no part is significantly outclassed by any other. I'd say that large parts should perform somewhat better, if only because it's bad for game performance to have to use clusters. However, neither should it end up better to use a massively overpowered engine for the job. To give an example, let's say I want to propel one orange tank with a TWR of around 2. Four LV-T45s will do that nicely and give 5,140 m/s of (vacuum) delta-V. A Skipper and two Mark 55 radials will give 4,840 to 4,970 m/s, depending on how much I use the less efficient radial engines, which isn't too bad. A Mainsail is massively overpowered for this job and the dV drops to 4,630, which is how I'd expect things to be; the Mainsail's a silly choice for the task. And then I put the new KR-2L engine on, and get 5,200 m/s of delta-v along with three times the thrust I need. That is a sign the engine significantly outclasses others. Career mode requires a progression in capabilities, and I don't believe that's contradictory to keeping the parts balanced. The range of things can be extended without the new parts outclassing the old, for example you can unlock at one extreme the Mainsail with high TWR but low Isp, and at the other extreme the nuclear and ion engines with massive Isp but dreadful TWR. Both expand the possibilities of what you can do but neither render other stuff obsolete. And then there's qualitatively different additions to the tech. Aircraft parts, docking ports, landing legs, rover wheels, RTGs, and so on. These are going to be unlocked during career mode and open up new options (or at least make them more practical) when they are. Finally, "if all else fails", career mode could introduce performance upgrades. The parts can be "balanced" with sandbox in mind, and then when you start career some of them are nerfed.

They're just sillyness though. You can SSTO a launch chair with the .625 m parts.

Practice high-speed "docking" with them.

Well that's not really a fair comparison since they use different fuels. The Merlin 1D has a higher specific impulse than the F-1, despite both using RP-1/LOX and the (simple, but not so efficient) gas-generator cycle. Of course, the F-1 gave around ten times the thrust.In the real world, what matters isn't pure performance but cost-effectiveness. Someone could conceive the best engine ever in every possible way, but if it costs a fortune to design and another fortune to make each engine it won't be getting off the drawing board.

Well "a fourteen four hundred" isn't much harder to remember than "an orange tank". But I reckon the orange tank is going to stick. Not least because its better fuel:tankage ratio may keep it as the tank of choice for putting fuel into LKO

I spent a while scouting out manoeuvre nodes for an Eve, Moho, and beyond flyby mission. I worked out that I want to encounter Eve at its node with respect to Moho, so I can use the gravity assist to match Moho's inclination. That should be possible by leaving LKO about 20 days from now. Then I started putting together an asteroid rendezvous mission, and in testing I did my first docking It was only with the ship I'd undocked from, but still. Went flying off course at first, but then brought things back under control, and even though I came in quite obliquely the ports still magneted together.

I quickly reproduced your lander in the VAB and let KER do the maths. I can't quite see your engine. If it's the rockomax 48-7S, you've got 760 m/s of delta-V and a Mun TWR of 7.3. That will comfortably get you into Munar orbit provided you don't mess it up, but I don't think it's enough to get back to Kerbin. So send up an orbiter with a spare command pod to meet Jeb and bring him back. If it's the ant engine (the LV-1), then with 650 m/s of dV and an initial Mun TWR of barely over 1 you will not go to space today. You can ascend as far as possible then have Jeb bail out and do the circularisation to Munar orbit with his jetpack, then rendezvous an orbiter to him, or else just send a rescue lander.

Can RCS thrusters be blocked? I know normal engines can; if there's something not actually touching, but near enough in the exhaust plume, the engine won't produce any thrust. But I don't know if it's the same for RCS. Specifically, is this "asteroid lander" likely to have any problems? (It's not meant to move an asteroid obviously. Just grab onto it and let a couple of Kerbals chill out in the seats.)

Yup, it's right there at the top of your save file. CanQuickSave and CanQuickLoad. And I assume CanRestart affects Revert Flight.

That does seem odd. Even considering it's basically a short length of fuselage into the bargain, 1 ton is too heavy.

I wonder if lowering the drag coefficient would help, by allowing the asteroids to fall faster.But of course you'll still only see the impact if you actually go to the asteroid and follow it down.

I generally do play one game at a time, as it were. KSP I've found very compelling. I daresay having never played anything like it is a big factor.

I like having KSP look only slightly naff instead of really naff, thanks to the performance improvements. And I like the big SRB. They can get a small payload practically into orbit by themselves, and will be better suited than the BACCs for bigger lifters.

You can always visit them and do stuff with them in their current orbit.

For the time being, just image the ion drives are actually props

Not been an issue for me, for some reason.